Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Just Say No: Loni Hancock avoids Nancy Reagan lovefest

State Sen. Loni Hancock

STATE SENATE | 9TH DISTRICT | East Bay State Sen. Loni Hancock, like many progressives, had a difficult time holding their tongue as the national media and Republicans venerated former First Lady Nancy Reagan following her passing Mar. 6.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Hancock and San Francisco State Sen. Mark Leno headed stage-right on the Senate Floor Monday when legislators posed with members of the Reagan family.

As entire Senate gathers for photo with loved ones of Nancy Reagan following commemoration, Leno and Hancock quietly leave the floor.

It wasn’t the first slight issued by Hancock and Leno against the Reagan legacy in recent weeks. The Bay Area lawmakers issued discontent with former President Ronald Reagan last Feb. 25 when Senate Republicans honored him on the occasion of his birth date.

Hancock, whose Ninth District includes Berkeley, remarked, “It wasn’t just the tanks and the national guard on the streets of my community when I was much younger in the 1960s. But I look at his presidency as a time when the nation turned in a profoundly wrong direction.”

Hancock is termed out of office at the end of the year. However, with former Assemblymembers Nancy Skinner and Sandre Swanson, like Hancock, staunch progressive, as likely successors, you shouldn’t expect much love for The Gipper over the next four years.

5 comments:

Concerning the recent lovefest for Nancy Reagan, when a person, and especially a prominent person, passes away, it is standard procedure to act as though the recently deceased was a wonderful person, and even though many of those who eulogized the recently deceased had little or nothing good to say about the person while he or she was still alive.

An excellent illustration of the above were all of the prominent people who eulogized Paul Powell, and who was also known as Paul "Shoeboxes" Powell, at his funeral, and even though he was one of the very sleaziest crooks, embezzlers, and money launderers in the entire history of US politics. (To learn more about the life of Paul Powell, type his name into Wikipedia or the Internet.)

And when Powell unexpectedly died, a ton of prominent politicians, and including even ones who were considered to be honest, at his funeral went through the standard ritual of eulogizing him and talking about how "wonderful" he was, and even though they were well aware that when he unexpectedly died tons of shoeboxes full of money he had embezzled had been immediately found.

And a few days after his funeral, and at which a lot of the big boys had eulogized him, it came out that some of the big boys who had eulogized him were aware at the time that they had eulogized him, that just after he died those shoeboxes had been found full of the money he had embezzled.

(NOTE: A few days after his funeral, in other words after all of the eulogizing, it became general public knowledge that just after he died those shoeboxes had been found full of the money he had embezzled. And while the general public did not find out about those shoeboxes until a few days after the funeral and the eulogizing was complete, however at least some of the politicians who had eulogized him at his funeral were well aware of those shoeboxes full of embezzled money at the time they eulogized him.)

In fact the sleazy life of Paul Powell became the source of a joke and a play on words. In other words rather than saying it would take a big man to fill his shoes, people began saying, "It would take a big man to fill his shoeboxes."

Nancy Reagan loved her husband, Bonzo's sidekick. She just said "No" to drugs and yes to designer crap for the Whitehouse. The Governor's Mansion in Sactown wasn't good enough for her, so they had to have a fancy new ranch house built for them, but they never got to live in it. She told Ronnie what to do. Not everyone wants to praise her, in life not in death. Personal choice.